


Between Games

by inelegantly (Lir)



Series: SWAG 2016 Fills [2]
Category: Hikaru no Go
Genre: Character Study, Ficlet Collection, Multi, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-16 06:15:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5817289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lir/pseuds/inelegantly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A small collection of short ficlets written during the 2016 Sports Anime Winter Games, consisting of character study and moments in snapshot. </p><p><b>Chapter 1:</b> Akira/Hikaru, Inferiority<br/><b>Chapter 2:</b> Ogata Seiji, Achievements<br/><b>Chapter 3:</b> Mitani & Akari, Cheating<br/><b>Chapter 4:</b> Mitani & Akari, Club Sendoff</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Akira/Hikaru :: Inferiority

**Author's Note:**

> For me, Hikaru no Go is a forever fandom. I first watched the anime and read the manga ten long years ago, when I was a baby fan not yet confident enough to write fic of my own. I love these characters so much that writing anything about them felt like a great responsibility to live up to, so I'm very grateful to the [Sports Anime Winter Games]() for giving me a kick in the pants and motivating me to write kind of a lot of hikago content in a very short timeframe. The first ficlet in this collection is the very first time I've written Akira and Hikaru and I'm so happy to have done it.
> 
> I know this is a small, old fandom but I feel those of us still around all really adore it a lot, and I hope they will enjoy my small contribution.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The prompt this was written from is: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt, This is My Story
> 
> This isn't actually an especially shippy ficlet, but to me the entirety of the series can be parsed as Akira and Hikaru's epic developing romance, and this is a character piece meant to fit into that legacy.

-

It's only for a moment. 

Akira catches Hikaru's eye, in that room full of ambition and fragile talent, a room where insei hone their claws against each others' backs. For those few protracted moments while their gazes lock he can _feel_ the chasm open up beneath him, can hear the rushing in his ears as the world once again drops out of place. 

But it's only for a moment. 

As soon as Akira can wrest himself away from Hikaru's challenging stare, he's out of there. The elevator lurches into downward motion, and the universe rights itself beneath Akira's feet. 

He's already put Shindou behind him. They played the only game that mattered and Shindou Hikaru could not do so much as stand his ground, let alone unsheathe his sword at Akira with presence enough to command a fight. Hikaru had put himself on his knees in that game, and the memory alone is enough to summon bile into rising against the back of Akira's throat. 

But it isn't the only memory Akira has of Shindou. He needs only to recollect those old joseki playing out on the board, each move with a certain weight, with its own presence, for the entire mood of the game to come flooding back through his senses. He remembers seeing those first few stones, strewn across the board like a constellation, for his blood to rush cold with the fear of a true fight. 

He tells himself, firmly, that there is nothing for him to be afraid of. 

He's a pro now. He's taken the lead. Even if the gap between them weren't oceans, miles, there is this undeniable roadblock standing between them and Hikaru is only challenging Akira to throw up more barriers. He'll put so much distance between them, Shindou won't even be able to glimpse his back as Akira leaves him behind. 

And he will abandon Shindou, he will ascend to a place where Shindou can never reach him. 

But even as Akira steps out of the elevator, steps back onto firm ground and moves to leave the go institute behind, that same shiver of fear lingers along the straight set of his spine. He can't ignore the rushing in his ears, nor the possibility that the ground beneath him is more shaky than he thinks. He can't forget that feeling of being given a challenge he is desperate, eager, to meet. 

Hikaru doesn't deserve his fear, doesn't deserve that respect when he's so often denied Akira any proper regard. But it's a hot feeling, that particular kind of fright, and part of Akira _does_ hope he'll have reason to feel it again, bright and alive in his blood rather than lingering in the shadow of a memory. 

-

-


	2. Ogata :: Achievements

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The prompt this was written from is: "Ogata contemplating the powerhouses ahead of him and the rising stars behind him, wondering if the title of Meijin will be denied him forever because he just wasn't the man he wanted to be."

-

When playing games, Touya Meijin prefers not to engage in too much superfluous talk. 

This has always been more than acceptable to Ogata. Touya's silence leaves him room to think and contemplate the board, and even when they are playing together in Touya's home in a room filled with other pros, that meditative quiet from the Meijin is a touchstone of calmness Ogata can use to keep his head cool. 

It's countered by Touya's playing style, play that's balanced rather than aggressive, that relies on strength and experience to put weight behind every move until the cumulative pressure of his game breaks the spirit of lesser players. Years of friendship haven't rendered Ogata immune to Touya Kouyou's intimidation, and he thinks that no number of years to come will weaken the force of Touya's willingness to fight. 

There was a time, though, that Ogata hoped to see such a day. 

When he was younger and first spending time in the Meijin's company and attending his study sessions, Ogata believed that all worthy things came in good time. Touya might be the Meijin now, but new challengers arose, and what was here one year would be passed by in the next. Go players were not immune to the ravages of life's progress, and the passing of a title from one player to the next was simply another facet of that cycle of death and rebirth. Touya Kouyou's time would come to the end, and the next Meijin would appear in his place.

Ogata hoped to be that successor. Even in those hopeful days of his youth he respected Touya too much — respects Touya too much — to believe that anyone without an admirable amount of discipline and skill would be able to unseat him from his titular throne. While the old pros lamented the weakness of a watered-down new generation, this was Ogata's motivation to work hard. Touya deserved to be challenged by someone who would give him a fair fight; Ogata was willing to form himself to that challenge. 

He looks at the Go board in front of him now, and it isn't that his goal feels impossibly far away. He and his mentor are both pros in their own right, and it would be a disservice to himself to undersell his abilities as a player. It would be a disservice to the new rising pros, not to acknowledge the fierceness of their play.

Ogata wonders, at times, whether he's come into his prime too late. 

In the reality where old players cede their titles to the new, where age must eventually bow out and allow the youth to make their mark upon the Go world, was Ogata not in the generation he believed? Is he one of the old guard, watching young talent crop up and force them ever closer to retirement, never mind that he hasn't yet bested any of his "peers" in all the ways that truly matter? 

He thinks of Kuwabara, that old fool. He might play the part of the doddering old man, but even Ogata is forced to acknowledge that Kuwabara's play hasn't suffered for his age. He might ask Kuwabara, when is the retirement party, isn't it time he step down and permit nature to take its course? But that's nothing, it's talk, just words too flimsy to unlatch a stubborn man's grasp from the renown he has built for himself. 

Ogata can't quite place himself with Kuwabara and Touya, when he has less of their age and none of their accomplishments. But he likewise cannot place himself with the youth, whose ferocity and vigor he already suspects outpace his own. He's in limbo, pressed between two talents and unable to judge which opponent he ought to bare his teeth at first. 

But he always has been one for challenges; even in the face of such weighted odds, he'll place his stones on the board same as always. If victory is for the youth, the least he can do is make them work for it. 

-

-


	3. Mitani & Akari :: Cheating

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The prompt this was written from is: "Akari asks Mitani to teach her how to cheat. "

-

"You want Tsutsui to hear you asking something like that?" Mitani protests, shooting a furtive glance back toward the clubroom door. 

"Tsutsui-san isn't going to come today," Akari insists, flipping her skirt down behind herself as she takes the seat opposite Mitani in front of one of the club's Go boards. "With graduation this close, he's far too busy to show up more than once a week. There's nothing for you to worry about!" 

Part of Mitani wants to insist that there's _plenty_ for him to worry about, when what Akari is asking is for him to teach her how to cheat. But another, equally weighty portion of himself is more than a little bit intrigued that she would ask in the first place — Akari, little miss follow the rules that she is, never seemed the type. 

"Doing stuff like _this,_ " Mitani says, making the same hand gesture Akari had made at _him_ when she asked, two fingers crooking like they're edging over Go stones, "isn't going to help you if you're a weak player all on your own." 

"I know," Akari says, stubborn. "I don't want to cheat so I can win games. I just want to know how to do it." 

Mitani gives her another long look, then pushes up from his seat. There are books full of kifu from important matches elsewhere in the clubroom, ones that Tsutsui likes to study and which the rest of them only occasionally look at. Mitani pulls one out, leafs through it to a game that looks suitable, and tosses it to Akari. 

"Recreate that," he says. "It'll be good for you, and once you do it I'll... I'll show you how to, _you know._ It's easier if you do it with stones laid down for an actual game, rather than just... Sticking some on the board to move around." 

Akari nods, decisively, and begins laying stones out on the board. She's quickly absorbed in the task, all of her concentration taken in by following the flow of moves in a game originally played out multiple decades in the past. It gives Mitani an opportunity to just _look_ at her, like he's seeing her for the first time. Akari, of all people, champion of teamwork and a goodie-goodie who just wanted to play go with friends. Asking to cheat. 

Part of him still finds it hard to believe, even as he's preparing to teach her. 

The game progresses upon the board as Akari recreates it, mapping itself out almost faster than Mitani thought to expect. Before he knows it he's seated across from her again, staring at the stones and picking out the irregular formations where he might try to slip in a few extra moku — if he were still doing things like that, that is.

And he isn't. 

"You look for places like this," he tells Akari, pointing one out on the board. "It's only a couple moku — you're going to get caught if you do it for more than a point or two at a time — but this game was won and lost by four points. That's why you don't cheat unless you're _already_ good. If you can't even finish a close game, it's not going to mean anything." 

Akari's face is neatly composed, staring intently down at the place Mitani is indicating on the board. As he speaks, she nods slowly, acknowledgment of what he's telling her. 

"So if someone wanted to cheat," she repeats, "they look for irregular formations like that, and do — what?" 

Mitani shows her, the little bit of almost-slight-of-hand where from her side of the board, all that's really visible is his working fingers and the back of his hand. He has her crane her neck around to his side, where she can see the busy work of his fingertips, scooting stones in directions they shouldn't be meant to go. 

"There's no way to catch it!" Akari exclaims.

"There's—" Mitani starts to say, and then: "What?" 

"I wanted to figure out how to catch somebody cheating!" Akari wails. "I thought if I just knew how to _do_ it, even if I'm not a good enough player for it to really matter against, then I would know if somebody tried to do it to me. But it's so hard!" 

Mitani flops back in his chair, leaning his weight on his arms and laughing breathlessly in surprise. "I thought you _really_ wanted to know how to cheat," he says. "Not catch a cheater." 

"I do!" Akari insists. "Isn't one just about the same as the other? I want to do both!" 

For a moment, Mitani has nothing to say to her, arrested by the thought that when it comes down to it, there really _isn't_ much different between what it takes to cheat, and what it takes to catch a cheater. He lets the silence open up between them for a minute, then mutters out, "huh." 

"I guess you're right," Mitani says, aware that he of all people would know best. "There's more than one thing you can do with an eye for cheating." 

-

-


	4. Mitani & Akari :: Club Sendoff

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The prompt this was written from is: "It's time to pass the Go club on to a new generation, and Mitani has a few words of wisdom for his underclassmen about the Hase Middle School legacy."

-

"Mitani..." Akari starts to say, one of her hands rising up as if to pull him back and stop him. 

But it's the last official meeting of the Hase Junior High Go club — for the year, at least, and for her and for Mitani it will be the last in their lives — and everyone is sitting around, chatting about games, talking about break, eating the snacks that she and Koneko prepared for everyone. Spirits are high, and when Mitani moves toward the front of the room everyone's eyes move willingly with him. 

Akari sinks slowly back into her seat, and supposes it shouldn't be too bad, letting him speak. 

Mitani clears his throat, staring out at his underclassmen with an air of great seriousness. It's only somewhat undercut by his slouching, by the way his hands are shoved in his pockets and his chin is tipped down in looking at them. But that's how Mitani always looks, and no one thinks to react to it. 

"We're graduating," Mitani says, bluntly, as his opener. "So you lot aren't going to see us around any more. It's up to you to keep the Go club going. If I come back here, I want to see people in this classroom! I want you to be here, playing games!" 

There comes a brief titter from one or two of the first years, ones who haven't been around long enough to know whether or not to take Mitani seriously. He glares at them, and they fall again to silence. He coughs, and begins again. 

"We've got a legacy of lying, and cheating, and _leaving our members behind_ —" that glare he directs at Akari, though she knows it's truly for Hikaru "—so if you screw up, don't feel bad. We screw up a lot. Keep going. Win the next tournament. Don't cheat, but if you're going to cheat, at least be good enough not to get _caught._ "

"Mitani!" Akari exclaims again. 

"Well they _shouldn't,_ " Mitani shoots back. 

"They shouldn't cheat at all!" Akari insists, before a moment of embarrassment sweeps over her and she bites back anything else she might have happened to say, looking away in a flush. 

Mitani waits a moment, leaving the opening for her to continue if she dares. When she doesn't, he wraps up his words of wisdom for the club. "Not to get mushy or anything, but we're all here because we like Go. We want to play Go with other people, and we want to win. So just... Keep playing. Maybe you'll want to quit for a while, but in the end, you always come back." 

With that, he saunters off back toward his seat, closing too abruptly for anyone to have a chance to respond. There's a long moment of silence as their members pause over their snacks and think over Mitani's words before — somewhat to Mitani's own surprise — there's an approving smattering of clapping. 

"Whatever," is all Mitani says in response, leaning his chair back where he's seated himself before one of the Go boards. "So before I leave forever, who's gonna play me?" 

There come a few more disconnected giggles, but when Mitani continues to wait, eventually one of the underclassmen moves to take the seat across from him. From her own table, Akari cannot help but smile. She couldn't have hoped to give the club a better sendoff.

-

-


End file.
